2009 Sep 24, 3:58"Put more constructively, if GCF mentioned application/xhtml+xml AND intercepted it, my site would “just work”. But that wouldn’t be an “opt in”, a concept that Ian Hickson once described as yet
another quirks mode switch."
chrome google web browser extension webbrowser mime xml xhtml technical 2009 Sep 17, 11:12This Javascript Nintendo emulator works amazingly well in Google Chrome. You can play Dr. Mario, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, etc.
browser javascript nintendo nes game videogame google tetris emulator 2009 Aug 11, 9:11Invite your friends for a fancy dress party with wine, dinner and board games of course, at IKEA. "...Jason downplayed our real intent, but let the very nice man know that we were here to play board
games, and that we had chosen IKEA for the location because it was so much nicer that any of our own actual homes..."
humor video prank ikea party parody 2009 Jul 19, 11:44
I've redone my blog's layout to remind myself how terrible CSS is -- err I mean to play
with the more advanced features of CSS 2.1 which are all now available in IE8. As part of the new layout I've included my Delicious links by default but at a smaller size and I've replaced the
navigation list options with Technical, Personal and Everything as I've heard from folks that that would actually be useful. Besides the layout I've also updated the back-end, switching from my
handmade PHP+XSLT+RSS/Atom monster to a slightly less horrible PHP+DB solution. As a result everything should be much much faster including search which, incidentally, is so much easier to
implement outside of XSLT.
blog database redisgn xslt mysql homepage 2009 Jun 29, 4:19
I've looked at my web server logs previously to see if anyone had used my Web Frotz Interpreter and until recently didn't realize that awstats (the web server log report generator) was truncating the query from my URL, so I couldn't tell that anyone was actually using
it. But after grepping the logs manually I've pulled out the URLs of visitor's text adventure sessions. If you'll recall, my Web Frotz Interpreter stores the game state in the
URL so its easy to see user's game states in the web server logs.
I've put some of the links up on the Web Frotz Interpreter page. Some of the interesting ones:
server-logs technical zork frotz pants interactive-fiction uri if 2009 Jun 19, 10:12
I'm excited by HTML5's video tag as are plenty of other people. Once that
comes about and once media fragments are adopted, linking to or embedding a portion of a video will be as easy as using the correct
fragment on your URL thanks to the Media Fragments WG who has been hard at work since the last time I looked at fragments.
However, until that work is embraced by browsers, embedding portions of videos will continue to require work specific to the site from which you are embedding the video. On the YouTube blog they
wrote about how to "link to the best parts in your videos", using a fragment syntax like '#t=1m15s' to start playback of the associated
video at 1 minute and 15 seconds. Of course if you want to embed part of a Hulu video it will be different. Although I haven't found an authoritative source describing the URL syntax to use, you
can follow Hulu's video guide on linking to part of a video and note how the URL changes as you adjust the
slider on the time-line. It looks like their syntax for linking to a Hulu page is to add '?c=[start time in seconds](:[end time in seconds])' with the colon and end time optional in order to link
to a portion of a video. And the syntax for embedding appears to be "http://www.hulu.com/embed/.../[start time in seconds](/[end time in
seconds])" again with the end time optional.
For more sites, check out the Media Fragments WG's list of existing applications' proprietary fragmenting
schemes.
hulu technical media fragment wg url youtube video html5 uri fragment 2009 Jun 19, 8:07
The weekend before the previous, Sarah and I moved our belongings into the
new house and spent a lot of time packing and unpacking, and now we're officially living there (interested Facebook friends can find my
new address or just ask me). The Saturday of the previous weekend Sarah's family came over for a half house warming and half Sarah's birthday celebration which was fun and served to force us to do
more unpacking and forced me to take trips to Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc. On Sunday, Sarah and I went out to her favorite restaurant and she opened her gifts that I had to hide to keep
her from opening before her birthday. Happy Birthday Sarah!
While at Home Depot I had trouble finding what I was actually looking for, but I did find everything I needed to terminate the Cat5e cables that are wired in the house. Each room has a wall plate
with two RJ45 sockets, both sockets wired to Cat5e cable. One of the cables per plate was already hooked up to a standard phone service punchdown board and the other cables per plate were all
hanging unterminated next to the punchdown board. So now I've terminated them all with RJ45 connectors and hooked them up to my hub, wireless router, cable modem, etc. I had the same sort of fun
setting all that up as I did playing with model train sets as a child. Hopefully no therapy will be required to figure out why that is.
personal2 train address sarah house new-house birthday 2009 Jun 8, 3:40I didn't hear about this at the time, but a sixth Hitchhikers Guide novel will be written by Eoin Colfer. This article has some quotes from Eoin about it and big-shoe filling is addressed. Also in
the article is a clip of the voice actor of Arthur Dent from the radio series as Arthur Dent complaining about being brought back to life that had been played on BBC Radio.
hhgttg douglas-adams eoin-colfer and-another-thing book news audio 2009 Jun 3, 3:40The New Super Mario Bros for the Wii looks cool. I always wanted the multiplayer featured here in the previous games.
for:hellosarah mario wii nintendo video videogame 2009 May 22, 6:59"...but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed. ... So if you wanted to create a fictional world involving travel through time, here are
10+1 rules by which you should try to play." I always liked Bill & Ted's time travel mechanics better than Back to the Future's - not that it made for a better movie of course. I'd like to see a
chart comparing the time travel mechanics of well known fiction that features time travel.
time-travel movie fiction bttf 2009 May 8, 8:23
I watched the new Star Trek movie Thursday morning, along with many others who work on Windows. Microsoft rented out a theater and played the movie on all screens. I greatly enjoyed the movie!
Spoilers follow... I'm obviously not the biggest Star Trek nerd (or at least TOS nerd) since I didn't even pick up on the fact that Kirk's dad being dead was a discrepancy from the TV series. I
only figured out the alternate time-line stuff when they killed most of the Vulcans. I was just surprised they didn't set right what once went wrong by the end of the movie with some more time
travel magic to bring back Vulcan. On that note, I'm pretty sure the Spock-Spock conversation at the end, is Nimoy Spock sending Sylar Spock off to school so that Nimoy Spock can get freaky
repopulating the Vulcan race. Although at first after his 'two places at once' comment I thought he was saying... something else. Also, was the main evil guy a random miner turned psycho? And his
crazy looking spaceship that destroys the Federation fleet was just a mining vessel from the future? Once they invent time travel anybody can get drunk, go back in time, and conquer Earth.
personal2 nerd movie star-trek spoliers time-travel 2009 May 6, 12:56Time lapse photography from the perspective of a large ship at night in Texas. "The camera was fastened to an outside rail and set to take a photo every six seconds. Quicktime then assembled the
photos into a .mov file that plays back at 12 frames per second. So, one minute of movie time represents 72 minutes of trip time on the channel. The first half begins just below the Port of Houston
Authority Turning Basin (the very end of the channel) and continues down to Green's Bayou."
flickr video photography travel camera texas ship boat 2009 May 3, 9:17
Netflix lets you watch a subset of their movies online via their website and a subset of those movies are available to watch on the Xbox 360's Netflix app. so its not always easy to find movies to
watch on Xbox 360. Yet, I regularly see my Xbox friends using the Netflix app and its a shame they didn't make an easy way to share movie recommendations with your friends. Instead we must share
movie recommendations the old fashioned way. Here's the movies I've found and enjoyed on my 360.
-
Weeds
-
You don't have to be a stoner to enjoy this humorous and dramatic satire featuring a widow trying to raise her children and deal pot in suburbia.
-
Avatar The Last Airbender
-
An American animated series that's an amalgamation of various Asian art, history, religion, etc. that maintains a great story line.
-
Paprika
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If you enjoyed Paranoia Agent you'll enjoy this movie in the same animation style and by the same director and
writer, Satoshi Kon. Its like a feature length version of a Paranoia Agent episode in which a dream machine lets outsiders view one's dreams but eventually leads to blurring the dreams and
reality.
-
Grindhouse Planet Terror
-
I didn't see either of the Grindhouse movies when they first came out, but of the two, Planet Terror is the more humorous and exciting gore filled parody.
-
Outsourced
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A refreshing romantic comedy that still has a few of the over played tropes but is easy to enjoy despite that.
-
The King of Kong
-
A hilarious documentary on the struggle between the reigning champ hot-sauce salesman and the underdog Washington state high school science teacher to obtain the Donkey Kong world record high
score. After watching, checkout this interview with the creators of the movie and the
villain.
-
Primer
-
I've mentioned Primer before, but I put it on
here again because its really good and you still haven't seen it, have you?
movie personal netflix 2009 May 1, 11:25Seems like this would be a good gift for someone. "...all of the characters ever played by William Shatner are suddenly sucked into our world. Their mission: hunt down and destroy the real William
Shatner. Featuring: Captain Kirk, TJ Hooker, Denny Crane, Rescue 911 Shatner, Singer Shatner, Shakespearean Shatner, Twilight Zone Shatner, Cartoon Kirk, Esperanto Shatner, Priceline Shatner, SNL
Shatner, and - of course - William Shatner!"
humor book gift wishlist william-shatner shatner startrek via:boingboing 2009 Apr 21, 1:28Fallout 3's May 5th DLC removes old ending, adds new quests, new levels, new perks. Sounds good! "In a nutshell, Broken Steel will remove the game's ending entirely, with Bethesda's Pete Hines saying
simply to fans that called for an open-ended resolution, "We got the idea." Players will still have to make the final choice, but following that climax the game will continue, presenting new epilogue
quests, another 10 levels to gain, and new perks, monsters and achievements to keep the climb interesting."
game videogame news fallout3 fallout 2009 Apr 21, 1:22Play some classic Sierra games like Space Quest 1. Oddly, you can see other players and what they're typing while you play.
sierra game abandonware flash adventure browser videogame web 2009 Apr 15, 7:33The emulator behind those cool script based Mario hacks. "FCEUX is a cross platform, NTSC and PAL Famicom/NES emulator that ... gives the best of all worlds for the casual player, the ROM-hacking
community, Lua Scripters, and the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Community."
emulator nintendo videogame software programming game 2009 Apr 14, 9:26
I've made a QR Encode accelerator around Google Chart's QR code generator. QR codes are 2D bar-codes that can store (among other things) URLs and have good support on mobile
phones. The accelerator I've written lets you generate a QR code for a selected link and view it in the preview window. In combination with the ZXing
bar-code scanner app for my Android cellphone, its easy for me to right click on a link in IE8 on my desktop PC, hover over the QR Encode accelerator to have the link's associated QR code
displayed, and then with my phone read that QR code to open my phone's browser to the URL contained inside. Its much easier to browse around in the comfort of my desktop and only send particular
URLs to my cellphone as necessary.
technical boring accelerator android barcode ie8 google qr code 2009 Apr 13, 10:17If the face drawn onto the robot hadn't been as cute I doubt as many people would have helped =). "Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they
encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to
reach their goal."
tweenbot video social map robot cute nyc society humor 2009 Apr 7, 12:45"First, you started up the application and picked a video clip. The video clip just sat there. As you started clapping, the video clip started playing. If you clapped at about 80 beats per minute,
the video clip played at its normal speed. If you clapped faster, the video clip ran faster. If you clapped slower, the video clip ran slower. If you stopped clapping, the video clip stopped. It was
freaky cool. Totally useless, but freaky cool."
humor clap video raymond-chen filter-graph reference-clock